Ford-Class Carrier Launched

[CountDeMoney]

Question to the military experts: Are carriers actually a viable weapon against an enemy with a similar technology? Or are they too vulnerable then to move close enough to the coast of such an enemy to operate efficiently?

Yes.  No.

[Berkut]

Yes. Unknown.

[CountDeMoney]

I thought the thread title was going to be a goof on the latest F-350 series mega-pick up of doom.

Ford was a good man, and deserves such a ship.  The deck crew should all be required to wear leather helmets.

[CountDeMoney]

Yes. Unknown.

"Unknown", he says.  Pfft.  We need a Joint Operational Access Concept smiley.

[mongers]

Known unknowns. Unknown unknowns.



Why don't they name a class of littoral combat vessels after the former VP, then sell some to Iran. 

[The Minsky Moment]

We also need more precise definitions of "close enough" and "efficiently"

[CountDeMoney]

We also need more precise definitions of "close enough" and "efficiently"

The United States Navy has successfully dictated the definition of those terms since January, 1942.

[mongers]

We also need more precise definitions of "close enough" and "efficiently"

The United States Navy has successfully dictated the definition of those terms since January, 1942.

So that's when Grumbler got fixated on definitions.

[jimmy olsen]

The Ford Class is nice, so lets bitch about the Zumwalts instead. 

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2013/1030/Navy-new-destroyer-USS-Zumwalt-is-bigger-badder-than-any-other-destroyer-video

Navy new destroyer: USS Zumwalt is bigger, badder than any other destroyer (+video)

The new Navy destroyer, the USS Zumwalt, sailed Monday after years of doubts about whether or not the enormous – and enormously expensive – stealth warship would ever be built.

The Navy's biggest-ever destroyer, the USS Zumwalt, sailed from a Maine port on Monday. The stealth warship is the first of the DDG-1000 class of destroyers, a controversial line of three ships to be deployed to the Pacific during the next three years as sentries to China's burgeoning naval might.

The USS Zumwalt is big: It is 610 feet long, has an 11,000-square foot flight deck, and displaces 14,564 tons of water. That's about 100 feet longer than other destroyers, as well a water displacement about 50 percent larger than the next biggest destroyer on the water, the Military Times reported.

Despite its colossal size, Zumwalt is also stealthy, with concealed antennas and an angular frame that makes it much less detectable to radar than are current warships. It also packs a punch. Its "Advanced Gun System" fires warheads at a range of about 63 miles with impeccable precision, three times farther than current destroyers can fire, CNN reported. Its massive electrical capabilities are also expected to support future laser weapons.

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But, as precedent suggests with ships of unprecedented size, there's a problem: Engineers aren't quite sure if Zumwalt ships are capable of weathering giant waves, according to Defense News. A single sizable swell that hits the ship's back end might take the ship down, engineers have said. That's because these ships sport a new, downward-sloping hull that primes the ship to move stealthily, but not necessarily stably; traditional ships have upward-flaring hulls.

The ships are controversial for more than just their Achilles hull: They are expensive – the most expensive Navy ships ever built, to be exact.

Zumwalts began as a dream of the 1990s, imagined as part of the 1991 21st Century Destroyer program, the news website Medium reported. What if a ship could avoid radar detection? What if it could ply the waters unnoticed, a Loch Ness monster of the open seas? What if the US could sport bigger and badder ships than ever before thought possible?

The Department of Defense announced in the 1990s that it would build 32 of the novel class of ships, originally called DD 21 and later DD(X). But the cost of building the ships began to float higher and higher, and, as it did, the Pentagon scaled back the number of behemoth ships it planned to put on the water. In 2003, the Pentagon said it would buy 16 ships. Then, it said seven ships. Then, in 2008, it said three ships.

In 2009, the number of ships was almost reduced to no ships at all, when costs ballooned to over $5 billion per ship, a violation of the Nunn-McCurdy amendment, which says that defense projects whose cost per unit grows more than 15% above what was originally estimated must be tabled. That year, to keep the program going, Department of Defense officials dialed back the cost of the first Zumwalt destroyer to $3.3 billion, with subsequent ships costing about $2.5 billion.

The most recent new destroyer, the US Arleigh Burke class of ships, cost about $1.8 billion each. The Navy is expected to return to building the cheaper class of ships after production wraps up on the three Zumwalts.

All three Zumwalt ships, called Zumwalt, Michael Monsoor, and Lyndon B. Johnson, are due to be based out of San Diego and to be charged with policing the Pacific. Their super structures are constructed at Huntington Ingalls Industries, in Gulfport, Miss., and assembled at Maine's Bath Iron Works, which is part of General Dynamics Marine Systems. The first ship will be delivered to the Navy in 2015, the Washington Times reported.

Zumwalt has hit the water, but it is not quite battle-ready, and Bath Iron Works will keep working on the ship in the water for the next few months. The ship had been due to be christened earlier this month with a bottle of champagne smashed against its hull, but the ceremony was postponed due to the government shutdown. The shipyard expects the champagne slinging to happen sometime in the spring, Fox News reported.

The class of ships is named for Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., the chief of naval operations in the early 1970s. He is credited with ordering the Navy to end racial discrimination and allowing women to serve on ships.

[grumbler]

I question any reporter who reports a ship launch as a ship sailing from port! 

Launching a ship just means you float it out of the building ways to make room for follow-on construction.  It still has to be fitted out for another two years; it's just a hull at this point.

The Zumwalt class is essentially, now, just a technology demonstration.  Three ships won't add a lot of combat power.

The most interesting feature of the ships, really, comes in all the design compromises that proved necessary to get them built.  they were always high-technology-risk ships, and probably half of the technology gambles failed to work out (like the volume air defense systems and the original main propulsion system).  It's the huge R&D budget that has inflated the unit price so much, to the point where they are more expensive than a Nimitz-class carrier (without its planes, mind you).

I don't buy any of the claims that a "giant wave" could sink them.  Real engineers know this isn't going to happen, but anonymous engineers are willing to say that it could happen, so they can get into the news.  The real problem with the design is that it doesn't have anywhere near the future-proofing that was assumed when they were first proposed.  Radar technologies could advance to the point where their stealthy nature becomes questionable, and then they would have to operate in battle groups vice solo, in which case you pretty much throw away the stealth advantages, because it is operating with non-stealthy ships.

They are the kind of design that have a huge impact on future ship designs, though, so getting that technology to see and seeing how it interacts with salt air and real operations probably makes them worth even their insanely high price tag.

[Siege]

[Neil]

Isn't it rather tempting fate to name the ship after Ford? You'd expect it to sink at launching. 

I hope you're slandering the President and not Ford Motor Company here

Personally, I'm waiting for a ship named after our Mayor, Rob Ford.

It would run on booze and crack - unfortunately, it would capsize frequently. 

Have you ever heard of the RFA Bacchus, with the RN Pacific Fleet during World War II?  It's exactly what is sounds like.  Or the RFA Menestheus, which was a recreation ship.

When the war comes, we'll have a Rob Ford.

[grumbler]

Question to the military experts: Are carriers actually a viable weapon against an enemy with a similar technology? Or are they too vulnerable then to move close enough to the coast of such an enemy to operate efficiently?

carriers remain viable for any number of missions, but hunting down enemy carriers ("similar technology") probably isn't one of them, because there isn't a similar technology to go after.

As to how close a carrier gets to an enemy coast, that depends on the supporting ships more than the carrier.  If you send a carrier to the coast of China, then it probably is just going to expend its sorties in air defense, and the point of it being there gets lost.  If it has a powerful supporting battle group, then the escorts can handle the air threat and the carrier can use its assets for strike. 

The real threat to even well-escorted carriers remains the submarine.  carriers usually have the mobility to make submarine operations against them extremely difficult, but if the sea area is limited, a few reasonably capable subs can just sit and wait for the carrier to come to them, and then its game over.

The great virtue of the carrier battle group is that it chooses the time and place of the engagement.  If, for political reasons (or whatever) it gets tied down, then it will become non-viable.

[Neil]

While a carrier obviously wouldn't be as effective in a war between equally powerful nations as it was in WWII, the USN isn't building these to bomb the Chinese littoral out of existence.  These ships are being built to project American air power around the world, in the form of bombs and missiles raining down on various flavours of Muslims.

[MadImmortalMan]

Are any of our CBGs headed to the Phils right now? Don't we usually send one after natural disasters to help with stuff?